It Looks Better on Me
by Liberty Roth
Summary: “You’re wearing my shirt,” he managed to get out. It was his, he was sure of it. He recognized the faded logo, the stretched out collar that revealed her collarbones and shoulders. Nick/Cassie.


Hmm. So I know that Cassie was thirteen in the movie… but I can't remember how old Nick was. I'm too lazy to rewatch it, so. Let's pretend he was twenty-four. This takes place nearly six years after the movie, when Nick is about to turn thirty and Cassie is nineteen.

* * *

He remembered the day they met. Or, well, the day _he_ met _her_. He imagined that Cassie already knew about him – and his refrigerator stock – when she knocked on his apartment door. "I'm a Watcher. Second generation, like you," she had claimed. Sometimes he thought she was more than a Watcher… maybe some new breed of talented human. An Irritator.

She was good at irritating _all_ people, but she almost seemed to be especially talented at annoying _him. _It was like she woke up in the morning and thought up ways to rub him the wrong way while picking out her clothing.

Oh. Clothing.

That was another thing that irritated him. Her _clothing. _Or, well, lack thereof. Though it had been four years since they had parted from her mother and Kira – he remembered her nodding in acceptance as her mother said it would make the future better - he didn't think Cassie had purchased bigger clothes since then. She still wore her tiny thirteen-year-old shorts and skirts, which were dwarfed by her nineteen-year-old body.

"Put some clothes on," he ordered one day as she stepped from their current hotel's bathroom. It was morning and the rays of sun shooting through the blinds to hit her golden hair. They almost looked like shiny threads of gold as Cassie dragged a comb through her hair.

She rolled her eyes, catching the damp towel he had tossed in her direction as he stepped into the now-vacant bathroom. He hated having to share a bathroom with a teenager. It was a pain in the ass, it really was. "These _are_ clothes," she argued, tugging down the hem of her skirt for the fiftieth time.

Nick started to close the bathroom door, but paused to evaluate her supposed 'outfit.' She wore the same too-tall boots with a daringly short (but not _too_ short, he mentally admitted hesitantly) skirt. The problem, really, was with her top. When she was fourteen, maybe fifteen, she could have gotten away with wearing it. Cassie hadn't really… _developed _by then, so a strapless tube top had been perfectly fine.

_Now_, though, you could see pretty much _everything_… "Go," he ordered, snapping his fingers and pointing to her small suitcase of belongings. He'd be lucky if she actually obeyed his orders this time. Nick closed the bathroom door, washing his face in the sink. He pressed a dry hand towel to his face to absorb the extra water. "Are you changing your clothes?"

There was a muffled sound coming from the other room. Through the closed bathroom door, he couldn't quite make it out. He paused for a moment, wondering if he even _wanted _to know what she was doing. Or _destroying_. Cassie sometimes punched things if she got angry. "What?" he questioned, deciding it was better to know now than be surprised by a mess.

"I don't have any other clothes!" she yelled through the door. Nick rolled his eyes as he ran a hand through his hair, wondering if he should get a shower now or later. He had taken one yesterday afternoon, though showers were hard to come by… should he take advantage of the handy shower or not?

"Yeah, you do, I've seen them!" he called back to her, deciding he'd just wait until their day was over to decide if he needed a shower. He'd hate to wash his hair only to have it dirtied by some shenanigan later in the day.

There was a frustrated noise coming from the other room. "Not _clean _ones," Cassie muttered, though he had barely been able to hear it. "We need to stop at that Laundromat before we leave."

"Just do it," he said, sitting down on the edge of the hotel's bathtub as he waited for her to tell him that she was done changing. He _hoped _she was changing, anyway. Usually Cassie did whatever he requested, but sometimes she did the total opposite just 'because.'

He waited a few minutes, taking inventory of the small toiletries around the edge of the bathtub. Cassie didn't see much point in taking them when they checked out of their current hotel, but he did. Who knew when you'd have to sleep in a car and take a shower at some lake?

"You done?" he asked eventually, when he could hear Cassie flick on the television set.

"Yeah, I found something," she called back. Wait, wait. Something that Cassie thought was more appropriate looking than a tube top was different than what _he _deemed more appropriate. Nick stood quickly, wrenching open the door.

Cassie was sitting on her bed, her legs dangling over the edge of the piece of furniture. "God, I really hate television," she said with a sigh, flicking off the TV. She tossed the remote up near her pillow, leaning back onto the comforter. "It's so full of shit. The girls from _the Hills _never had to deal with nearly being killed."

Nick was silent as he stared at her. After a moment, her brow wrinkled and she propped herself up on an elbow to look at him. His silence was uneasy to her. "Hey, what's wrong with _you_? You always get mad when I say 'cuss words' or whatever you wanna call them. What's wrong?"

There were _so many _things _wrong_ with what was going through his head at that moment. "You're wearing my shirt," he managed to get out. It was _his_, he was sure of it. He recognized the faded logo, the stretched out collar that revealed her collarbones and shoulders. He was surprised she had managed to find it – he swore he had thrown it out a few weeks back because it no longer fit him.

"Yeah. I figured you wouldn't mind," she studied his expression, and then looked suddenly worried. But, as it was Cassie, she tried to look _cool _while she tried to hide the sudden uneasiness. "Hey, you don't mind, do you? I can take it off if you want – "

An image of her _taking it off_ was suddenly emblazoned into his mind. It wasn't helped by the fact that her shirt (his, technically) had rose up a few centimeters when she had flopped backwards onto her bed. He could see her hips and her flat abs that stretched between them.

"No," he said after a moment, heading towards the minifridge that was nestled against a wall. Stocked with overpriced goodies, his hand thrust forward to find one bottle among its contents. He pulled the alcohol out of the cool square, popping the top off with a gentle Push and downing half of the contents.

"What are you doing?" Cassie stood, coming to kneel next to him on the floor. Her damp hair touched his knee as she peered into the fridge.

"Drinking," he said, his voice a little sharper than he intended it to be. It wasn't really _her _fault that she didn't have any appropriate pieces of clothing.

"Can I have something?" She didn't wait for him to answer; she knew the answer by now. But her petite hand shot into the fridge anyway, aiming for a bottle full of a pinkish alcoholic drink.

This time, he intended for his voice to be sharp as he caught her hand. "No, you can't," he said, pulling her hand away from the contents of the refrigerator. The door swung shut with an air nudge from two of his fingers.

She stood, irritated as she retreated back to her bed. She hugged one pillow, shoving another beneath her heels. Her next sentence was so soft that he barely heard it. "I'm not thirteen anymore," she said quietly. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to have heard it or not, so Nick stayed quiet.

While he slides his feet into his shoes, her expression brightens somewhat. "So, what're we doing today? Kicking ass and taking names? I could use some action, Nick, I've been stuck in hotel after hotel for friggen weeks."

"We're going shopping. I've got some cash and you need normal-looking clothes."


End file.
